Chinese President Xi Jinping has been accused of overseeing a crack down on human rights including the arrest of lawyers and activists.
Photograph: Li Gang/Xinhua Press/Corbis

A Swedish human rights activist who is being held by police in Beijing had been “making trouble in China” by aiding “radical political activists”, a Communist party controlled newspaper has claimed.

Peter Dahlin, 35, a Beijing-based campaigner, was picked up by Chinese security officials earlier this month and is being detained on suspicion of endangering state security, authorities said this week.

The foreign activist’s detention has sent shock waves through Beijing’s NGO community with experts describing the move as yet another escalation of Xi Jinping’s continuing quest ‘to wipe out independent civil society in China’.

Chinese authorities have offered scant details of why they are holding Dahlin, who went missing on 3 January while travelling to Beijing’s international airport on his way to Thailand.

But on Friday, an editorial in the Global Times, a government-run tabloid, claimed the Swedish activist was guilty of “making trouble in China” and alleged his group had been “dedicated to aiding political confrontation”.

“As far as we know, without being registered in the Chinese mainland, CUAWG has been carrying out activities outside China’s legal supervision. A small number of radical political activists secure funds from overseas through such illegal channels and are subject to the orders of their sponsors,” the newspaper claimed.

Noting reports that Dahlin had connections to Chinese human rights lawyers at the centre of a major government crackdown, the newspaper warned: “Things will get complicated if Dahlin funded illegal actions of the arrested lawyers using overseas sponsorship.”

The Global Times said Chinese courts should now deal with Dahlin “in accordance with the law”. “He is a foreigner. But he is no exception to Chinese law.”

The combative editorial appears to bode ill for Dahlin, who suffers from Addison’s disease, a rare hormonal disorder that requires regular medication.

Speaking to the Guardian this week, Michael Caster, a spokesperson for CUAWG, said he suspected his colleague’s detention was linked to Beijing’s offensive against civil rights lawyers, a number of whom are now facing life in jail on political subversion charges.

“With the size and severity of the crackdown on lawyers and their assistants it only makes sense from a totalitarian perspective to go after anyone who has provided them support or is actively sympathetic to their cause of promoting human rights,” Caster said. “It is a startling reminder of what Xi Jinping’s China looks like.”

Dahlin’s supporters say accusations he had endangered China’s state security are “baseless”.

On Friday, Caster rejected the Global Times’ claim that CUAWG was a United States-based organisation.

“China Action is not now and has never been based in the United States,” he said.

“And the only way to handle this situation according to the law is to immediately release Peter and all Chinese human rights defenders currently detained or facing charges as reprisal for their nonviolent defense of human rights.”